Sheldon Keefe taking notice of the play of Sandin and Liljegren on the current road trip

"They're going to grow through this experience. Those guys today were excellent, maybe as good as they have been on this trip. And to do it on a back-to-back, against an opponent like this, there were some real challenging matchups for them," said Sheldon Keefe on how well Liljegren and Sandin were in 22 and 23 minutes, respectively.

It's amazing what can happen in a couple of weeks, as Keefe said in the middle of November that Sandin was struggling with his confidence, and they expected more out of him. Now he's playing top-4 minutes and doesn't look out of place at all. As a matter of fact, since Sandin and Liljegren have been paired together (not including last night's game), they have been driving play offensively, while being very sound in their own zone.

Including the game against Minnesota, when Liljegren and Sandin are on the ice, the Leafs have a 74% expected goals for, are out shooting opponents (39-22), out scoring (4-1), and are dominating in scoring chances (23-9). Without Jake Muzzin, TJ Brodie and Morgan Rielly, Liljegren and Sandin have seized the opportunity to grow and develop while taking on much larger roles in the Leafs' blueline.

Along with Keefe, Kyle Dubas must be equally thrilled with how his young defensemen have stepped up with $18.9M of defensemen out of the lineup right now.